


The Placebo Effect

by tjs_whatnot



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 15:11:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4750955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjs_whatnot/pseuds/tjs_whatnot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing Neville wants from Harry and Ron (of all people) is advice. In fact, the only thing he really wants is a bit of luck. Liquid Luck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Placebo Effect

**Author's Note:**

> Written for HP Get Lucky

~ooOoo~

Neville had just locked the door to the Leaky Cauldron and had gone back to his nightly closing up duties when he heard the knock. He had taken the job and the room above the bar after the war to be close to the center of Wizarding London while raising enough money to continue his studies. He didn’t mind it because he knew it was temporary. He was looking to get on as Professor Sprout’s apprentice any day now.

He unlocked the door in a rush of nerves. “Harry have you got it?” he got out before he’d even finished opening the door.

“I’ve got something even better,” Harry answered and Neville saw that his friend wasn’t alone.

“Ron?”

“Yep,” Harry said as both he and Ron walked in so that Neville could re-lock up.

“No offense to either of you, but how is Ron better than Felix Felicis in this… oh Merlin, did you tell him?” Neville asked, horrified.

“Relax, Neville, really. It’s okay. I tell Ron everything. It’s alright. He’s cool with it. And he promises not to tease you or anything.”

“Yeah mate, me of all people totally understand your fascination and your desire.”

“You do?”

“Of course. Hermione is an amazing woman. What man wouldn’t want to date her?”

Neville gave him a look. Ron amended, “Okay, what straight man wouldn’t want to date her.”

“So you have something better than Felix?” Neville asked, still sounding skeptical.

“We do,” Harry beamed, putting his arm around Neville’s shoulder.

Ron put one of his arms around Neville’s other shoulder and they walked him to a small table. “Good sound advice,” he finished.

Neville groaned. “Again, no offense, but I think I’m going to need something a bit more than that, a bit more _lucky_ if you know what I mean.”

“What _do_ you mean, Neville?” Ron asked. “If you’re looking to just score, than we’re not going to be able to help, and we might have to _actively_ hinder.”

“No, no!” he quickly protested. “That’s not what I mean at all. I mean…” he struggled. “Look at me, I’m Neville, just Neville and she’s--”

“Hermione, just Hermione,” Harry interrupted. “The first thing you have to do is stop putting her on a pedestal.”

“Yeah, she hates that,” Ron added as they sat down. Neville went behind the bar and pulled three pints before returning.

“Besides, stop selling yourself short. You’re not _just_ Neville, you are Neville Fucking Longbottom! You are a catch, my friend!” 

Ron shrugged. “I’d do ya.” Harry kicked him under the table. “I mean, if I were single which, I very much am not.”

“Better.” Harry smiled.

“But you know what I mean. You are not the Neville we started Hogwarts with and she is not the Hermione,” Ron said. 

“Besides, she went out with this guy, how high do you think her standards are?” Harry asked.

“Hey,” Ron objected. He picked up a napkin to throw at Harry but then thought better of it and shrugged. “He’s right. I was a shitty boyfriend and she still tolerated me for much longer than she should have.”

“Guys, I appreciate your help, I do. But I don’t want to take Felix because I think it will make her think or feel things she wouldn’t without it, I know that’s not how it works. I want it for myself. To give me the nerve to even approach her about this, about this maybe, sometime, some place going out with me and… and... “

“Alright, alright,” Harry soothed, reaching for Neville’s shoulder and giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I understand, really I do.”

“We both do. Believe me. You think we weren’t nervous to take our relationship from where it was safe and easy to where it was terrifying with a possibility of world destroying?” Ron asked, placing his hand on Harry’s shoulder. 

Neville took a deep breath and tried to relax. He fleetingly wondered what they would look like to a passerby who looked in the window; three guys setting at a table each grasping the shoulder of another. It made him smile.

“Okay, so how did you two take that step?”

“Badly,” Harry confessed.

“Yes. Horribly, with lots of Firewhisky involved.”

Neville’s calm was again shattered. 

Harry must of sensed this because he hurriedly continued, “But we learned a lot of what _not_ to do, what things to avoid and a lot of what we should have done instead.”

“Which is?”

“Everything.”

Harry and Neville both glared at Ron, so he amended, “Okay, okay, that probably doesn’t help. The most important thing we learned was to not over-think it.”

Neville laughed. “You two?” He pointed at both of them, still laughing. “You two over thought something?”

“Oi!” Ron exclaimed.

“Yes, you git, _we_ over thought something. We might fly by the seat of our pants with most things, and yeah, maybe we didn’t put a lot of thought into school work and the like, but when it comes to things as important as the person you want to spend the rest of your days, everyday with, yes, we over thought.”

Neville bowed his head as way of contrition. “How did you over think?”

“We made everything a much bigger deal than it should have been, so that we worked ourselves into this weird frenzy that made us awkward and stupid,” Harry explained.

Neville, despite himself, gave Harry a look.

“Yes, alright, _more_ awkward and stupid.”

“It was so that we couldn’t even be in the same room together and both of us were convinced that we were the only one who was having those feelings. We couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t take that step because, good lord, it was _everything_.”

“What did you do?” Neville asked, curiosity outweighing his own concerns.

“We almost ruined everything by not doing anything. Then when we were out of the country together on an assignment, we were stranded and had nothing to do. The mission had gone successfully and we were done, yet snowed in. So we drank. And we fought. Then we drank some more. And finally talked. A lot.”

“And then…” Ron began but couldn’t finish. But he didn’t need to; Neville saw the way they smiled at each other and how little they remembered he was in the room with them.

“Ahem,” Neville said after a minute. They turned to him, both blushing. “So, this is what you’re suggesting I do with Hermione? Minus the alcohol and the angst?”

“Absolutely,” Harry confirmed.

“But let me ask you something first,” Neville started, standing up and reaching for each of their empty mugs. “Didn’t you ever think that maybe a shot of Felix would have made all of that so much easier?”

Harry thought about it as Neville went back to the bar and poured each of them a new pint.

“Honestly, no.”

“Really?”

“Really. I needed to know, know that it was me, not the _magical_ me, not the lucky me that was in the moment, was getting the boy, so to speak. You know?”

Neville shrugged.

“Really, Neville, you’ll want to know. Believe me.”

“But what if I never get the nerve, never get the moment?”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Ron said, clapping Neville on the back, picking up his pint and clinking it against Neville’s. “But first, what do you want to do with Hermione?”

“Do with her?” Neville sporfled, turning cherry red in the cheeks.

“Not that, perv! I mean, what do you want? Do you want to take her on a date? Do you want a serious relationship? What?”

Neville still blushed, but just shrugged. “I just want to hang out with her more.”

“No you don’t,” Harry said. 

“What? Yes I do.”

“You hang out with friends and Hermione is already one of those. You don’t ask favours from me like Felix for hanging out with a friend, you don’t even need Felix. What do you really want that you think you need luck to get?”

Neville hung his head and mumbled. “I need her to see me as more than that. More than how she’s always seen me. What do I do?”

Ron and Harry took a drink.

“It’s simple,” Ron began. “Firstly, you _never_ ask her to _hang out_ , not ever. You want her to see you as more than a friend, you have to not treat her like just another friend.”

Neville looked up from his lap. “That’s good. Really good. What else do you got?”

“You have to take her somewhere that screams date and then--and this is the hard part--you have to tell her how you feel.”

“And I have to do this without Felix? That is a _terrible_ idea.”

“You can do it, Neville,” Harry cheered. “We can be there too, for support, if you want.”

Ron and Neville sputtered their beer. “What?” Ron asked. “Like a double date? Neville’s right, that’s a _terrible_ idea.”

“Really bad,” Neville agreed.

“No. Not a double date, but maybe a party. Something small and intimate. So there will be people that make you feel safe but it won’t be hanging out.”

“How won’t it be hanging out?” Neville asked.

“Well first, you will have to invite her. And remember not to use the words ‘hang out’ or 'chill' or whatever people call it these days, and secondly, we’ll only invite couples. How does that sound?”

_Awkward and weird,_ Neville thought, but shrugged. It might work, or it could be an unmitigated disaster. Either way, first he’d have to swallow his fear long enough to ask her. If only they’d just give him a drink, one little sip of Felix. Why did it have to be the most difficult potion to make with the hardest ingredients to find or most expensive to buy? Why? 

Finally he nodded, and muttered unconvincingly, “Okay, I’ll give it a try.”

“That’s my boy!” Ron exclaimed, slapping Neville hard on the back. “Next week is Seamus’ party. We’ll ask her--I mean, _you’ll_ ask her that night. We’ll come and help you prepare, okay?”

Neville smiled, realizing Ron was probably a bit more invested in the outcome of this than he’d let on. If Hermione were to fall in love with Neville, or any other bloke really, then Ron would probably get to feel better about the demise of his and Hermione’s relationship and how badly it had gone.

Neville, like a lot of their friends, had watched it all go down from the sidelines, and some of it they had, as a group, predicted and some of it was a huge shock. All the while though, there had been a knot of something verging on guilt in Neville’s stomach, because as it were happening, like right in the middle of its trauma, was Neville’s elation.

He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when he started having feelings for Hermione, they seemed to have always been there in the back of his mind and in the deep recesses of his heart where all things that seem impossible and desirous simultaneously resided. He thought he’d always have to live with them and knowing there was nothing that could be done, for it had seemed a foregone conclusion that she and Ron would live the Happily Ever After that all readers of fairytales feel is their due. 

Then it all fell apart. And along with Neville’s elation, and guilt was the overriding feeling of terror. He had no more excuses or reasons other than he wasn’t good enough, wasn’t deserving of her affections. He’d had years and years of unattainability to build her up to this unreachable, highly desirous being so that now, the thought that she could be more was almost too hard, and terrifying to contemplate.

Yet, for the next week, he thought of little else.

~ooOoo~

“Ready?” Harry asked standing behind Neville, his arms around him adjusting his tie through the mirror’s reflection. Neville was second guessing the tie, and the slacks, and the shoes… and leaving his room over the bar to join the party below. He’d still not figured out how to ask Hermione to attend Ron and Harry’s soiree--they had insisted on calling it that, not him--and it was now only a week away.

Neville nodded his head yes, but said, “No.” And that pretty much summed up the readiness level, he thought.

“I just get so… I don’t know, nervous? I mean, I can talk to her and I know we’re friends and that she enjoys my company… I mean as well as she enjoys everyone else’s company. But when I get ready to ask, to take that step, I choke and wind up blubbering something ridiculous or incoherent so that she looks at me with a puzzled and slightly concerned face.”

“Ah, I know that face well,” Ron called from his current position in Neville’s wardrobe. He clearly was also second guessing Neville’s clothing choices.

Harry was still trying to get the tie to cooperate while Neville wondered how Harry even knew how to tie these things. Really, wasn’t that one of the reasons magic was even invented? “Relax, mate.” 

He must have also came to the realization that Neville had, for he whispered an incantation and the tie tightened and straightened itself.

“I’ll tell you what,” Harry continued. “If you _really_ think you need it, if you _really_ don’t think you can gather the nerve without it, even though, I find that ridiculous. Do you remember that time you stood up to Voldemort? I mean the fuckin’ Dark Lord, Neville. Are you telling me facing Hermione is more terrifying than that?”

Neville swallowed. “You of all people should know those two things don’t require even close to the same nerve. That was 100% adrenaline and nothing else mattered. This is… well, everything matters.”

“Okay,” Harry sighed and reached into his pocket. “Like I said, if you _really_ need it--”

“Harry, what are you doing?” Ron asked, rushing out of the closet with his hands full of shoes. Neville thought there was a joke in there somewhere, but he didn’t have the concentration for it. 

“You mean it, Harry?”

“Harry?” Ron said as if a warning.

Harry held up his hand, a tiny bottle in one of them. “It’s okay, Ron. Sometimes everyone just really needs that extra bit of luck, you know?”

“No, but--” Ron started.

“Remember that time? Your first Quidditch match? Remember how it helped?”

“But you said…” Ron said, then stopped. “You said that was a special occasion.”

Neville watched them holding some sort of conversation with their eyes, but he really didn’t care what they were discussing. He grabbed for the potion. 

“Everyone sometimes could use a special-occasion bit of luck.” Harry handed the potion to Neville. “When they really need it.”

“I really do.”

Harry sighed. Neville almost opened and downed the potion right there, he was so anxious. But he stopped himself. “When do I take it? How long does it take to work? How long will it last? What will it feel like?”

“You have about 12 hours of luck and it starts almost immediately after you take the potion. What does it feel like?” Harry thought about it.

“It feels like a weight being lifted,” Ron filled in. “It’s not much of a change to start, you won’t even notice at first, but then you’ll slowly notice that you’re not ruled by fear anymore.” 

Harry added, “Right, you won’t have to contemplate what is the right move, you’ll just _know_. 

“That little voice that’s always there telling you that you’re not good enough will be drowned out by the other voice, the one you never usually listen to telling you all the ways that you matter and have value,” Ron admitted. The room was awkwardly silent as Ron realized he might have said too much and the other two didn’t know how to respond. He shrugged. “Or that’s how it worked for me.”

“Me too,” Harry whispered, his voice fond. He took Ron’s hand, they both wished Neville good luck and left the flat, heading to the party in full swing below at the bar.

Neville took a few deep breaths, slowly calming down enough to slip his shoes on and, checking himself in the mirror one last time, opening the tiny bottle of potion. “Down the hatch,” he said to the empty room. 

It was just the merest of drops on the tongue. Neville didn’t know if it were his imagination of if there had actually been a small sizzle when it touched his saliva. He couldn’t describe the taste, but he swirled his tongue around his mouth, trying to discern it. Sweet and somehow familiar. 

Neville shrugged at his reflexion. “Now or never.”

He had barely gotten out the door and to the stairwell when he saw her, and she was alone, and she was coming up the stairs, as if… as if…

“There you are,” she said, looking up and seeing him. She smiled wide. “I was starting to think you weren’t going to make an appearance.”

Neville blushed, but then tasted the potion on his lips and instead of sputtering something incoherent, just smiled instead. “Never. I was just trying to find something suitable to wear.”

She was on the landing now. She leaned back and appraised him and his blush burned his cheeks almost painfully. Was she smiling? Approving?

“You seemed to have chosen well.”

Now he leaned back and pretended to appraise her as well. “As did you.”

It was her turn to blush. He, on the other hand, felt like he was floating above them, watching and quite pleased with how it was turning out. 

“What are you smiling about?” she asked with a tease in her voice.

“Me? Well, I was just noticing, you and I, what we’re wearing. It sort of almost matches. Isn’t that weird?”

She looked at his crimson tie that matched her skirt and his grey slacks that matched her blouse.

“Huh?” she said, “That is weird. Almost like we planned it.”

Neville studied her. This was just too easy.

“So, should we join the party? I’m sure everyone is wondering if you’re going to make an appearance.”

“Oh, I’m sure I’m not even missed.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he amended. This was not the time to pity himself, not in front of her. “It’s just this is Seamus’ party, and I’m not him, so I'm sure no one has noticed.”

“But that’s not true. I noticed.”

Neville swallowed. “You did?”

“Of course I did, that’s why I came to find you.”

She looked down, but he could see that she was once again blushing.

_I fuckin’_ love _magic!_ he thought, beaming.

“Should we?” Hermione asked, heading back to the stairs. 

“Wait,” he said, reaching for her wrist. 

She turned. “Yeah?”

She was so close and she was looking at him like he’d never noticed her look at him before. Had she been looking at him like this all this time? Had he not seen it because of that voice in his head telling him he wasn’t good enough? That voice that Ron had been right about, that voice that was now muted, thanks to the Felix?

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to be steady and not sputter at her. “I was wondering if you had a date to Ron and Harry’s...thing?”

“Their _soiree_?” she asked in a tone that said she too thought it was a ridiculously pretentious word. His heart swelled even more.

“Yeah, that. Do you?”

“No.”

“Would you like to go… with… with me?”

“With you?”

He panicked, the potion lessening the sting of humiliation, but still, it was there. “Well, I mean… we could go as… as… just friends… or…” he cursed at himself, not noticing her coming closer, stepping right in his space, sharing his air.

“Or? Or what?” she whispered.

_Or I could just kiss you_ , he thought, and then, he blamed the potion. He did. It was a quick, almost chaste kiss, but it was a meeting of lips and a confession of sorts.

“Or as something more?” he answered, dying to lick his lips to taste her there.

He wasn’t even afraid that she would back away or run. He instead just watched as she pulled back just a tiny bit, just a bit to see him better. “Neville Longbottom, did you just kiss me and ask me out on a proper date?”

He swallowed. He had. He had done it. He nodded. “I did. What do you say?”

“I say,” she was again right there, her nose a hair’s breath from his, “Why’d it take you so long?”

This time she was kissing him and it was much less quick, much less chaste. After a moment when he finally realized what was happening and that it wasn’t something that only he wanted, he wrapped his arms tightly around her, lifting her up a tiny bit. She gasped and Neville groaned. It was perfect. And yet. It seemed to him, a bit _too_ perfect. Harry had been right.

He hated when Harry was right.

“What’s the matter?” Hermione asked.

“I cheated.”

“Pardon?”

He stepped back even farther. Wanting to be out of slapping distance. He’d seen first hand what she could do when she was disappointed into anger at a person of his sex. “I wanted so badly to ask you out that I panicked and asked Harry for help.”

“Harry?” Hermione asked, and Neville puzzled over her oddly amused expression. “And how did Harry help?”

“He gave me some solid advice, firstly…”

“Did he now?”

He nodded enthusiastically and decided to leave Ron’s name out of this. “Very solid. And then I chose to ignore all of it and ask for a bit of liquid luck instead.”

“Yeah? Why?”

He shrugged. Wanting to sit her down and explain and not thinking that it could happen downstairs and not brave (or stupid enough) to invite her to his room, he motioned the stairs and they both sat.

Taking a deep breath, he began his confession, all of it. “I’ve been wanting to ask you out for so long, so very long. I’ve mucked it up so many times and I… I don’t know, I just really thought we’d be brilliant together… you know, as a couple… if only… if only I had the nerve…”

She smiled and his heart was lifted before she even spoke. “Thank you.”

“For what? For being too cowardly to be able to talk to you without magic? Harry said you wouldn’t like that.”

“He’s right about that part. No, the thank you is for being honest with me. Now I’ll be honest with you. You see, I’ve been wanting you to ask me out too. Only a bit longer than I’ve been wanting to do the asking. Only… well, I just could never work up the nerve.”

“You?” he almost shouted. “ _You_ were too nervous to ask _me_? But that doesn’t even make any sense.”

She leaned back and gave him a look. “How do you figure? You think it’s easy for girls, even strong, capable girls such as I, to ask a boy she really likes out? Especially when she’s never done that before? Especially since she’s never been in a relationship that didn’t pretty much start when she was an adolescent school-girl?”

“Well… yeah. I mean, you’re Hermione Granger. There’s nothing you can’t do.”

She laughed really hard and Neville was beyond confused. “Oh, if only that were true. That is the first myth you’re going to have to dispense with if we are going to… going to… do this.Besides, you’re Neville Longbottom, you slay snakes and stand up to Dark Lords!”

“One time,” Neville said with a laugh. “You do that _one time_ and you start to get a reputation.”

Hermione leaned over and kissed him again. He kissed her back and marveled at how easy and perfect it was. He was thankful for the Felix even if he still wished he would have had the nerve to do it without magic. When they again mutually broke the kiss, this time, leaning their foreheads together in case the urge came over them again, Hermione sighed. “I’m so relieved you finally got the nerve to ask me out.”

“Me too,” he answered. “I just wish I didn’t need a potion to do it.”

She smiled and blushed. He was really starting to like the way she did that, even if he was baffled as to the why. She soon explained. “Okay, since you made your confession, I guess I should make mine.”

“Yeah?”

“Harry didn’t give you Felix Felicis.”

Neville sat back and stared at her. “Yes he did. Ron was there, they both told me what it would feel like and that’s exactly what it did feel like.”

She laughed again. “Ron’s never taken the potion either. Harry pretended to give it to him like he pretended to give it to you.”

“What? Why?”

Hermione shrugged. “Probably because Harry of all people knows when real luck is required and when the appearance of luck is more appropriate. He also knew that you didn’t need as much luck as you thought you did. It wasn’t like you were going to have to convince me or anything.”

“Harry knew you wanted--”

“You? Yeah. He figured it out. Why do you think he offered to help you in the first place?”

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“And take away all his fun? The boy gets so little now that he’s all domestic and settled down. Besides, maybe he figured it wasn’t his secret to tell.”

Neville smiled and bumped his shoulder softly into hers. After a moment he asked, “Now what? Should we go join the party?”

She bumped him back. “Well,” she looked over his shoulder to the door to his room, the blush working its way down her throat this time. “It would be a shame to let that potion go to waste, don’t you think?”

“But you…” it took him a minute, but then his blush matched hers. “Oh, yeah, the _lucky_ potion. Yes, it would be a shame.”

They grinned ridiculously at each other as they raced to his bedroom door.


End file.
